Long ago a reader commented with an interesting historical and, it turns out, archaeological question:
Visited St. Paul’s Cathedral today in hope of finding the epithet of our ancestor John Cawood who was Queen Mary’s and Queen Elizabeth’ royal printer in the 1500’s. He was a member of St. Faith under St. Paul’s Church and supposedly buried there. By chance do you have a listing of those who were buried there or other information.
Every monument that survived the Great Fire of 1666 is accounted for and John Cawood’s is not among them so we have to assume it was lost in the destruction of Old St Paul’s. Thankfully a description of the Cawood monument survives. Payne Fisher, who was poet-laureate to Oliver Cromwell, recorded all of the memorials, their locations and descriptions, in his book The Tombs, Monuments, &c., Visible in S. Paul’s Cathedral (and S. Faith’s Beneath It) Previous to Its Destruction by Fire A.D. 1666.
According to Fisher, the Cawood memorial was located “over the Pillar” in the “Eastern part of the Church.” The epitaph read as follows:
JOHN CAWOOD, Citizen and Stationer of London, Printer to the most renowned Queen’s Majesty, ELIZABETH; married three wives, and had issue by JOANE the first wife onely, as followeth, three sons, four daughters; JOHN his eldest Son being Bachelour of Law, and Fellow in New Colledge in Oxenford, died 1580; MARY married to GEORGE BISHOPPPE, stationer; ISABELL married to THOMAS WOODCOCK, stationer; GABRAEL, his second Son bestowed this dutifull Remembrance of his deare Parents 1591, then Churchwarden; SUSANNA married to ROBERT BULLOCK; BARBARA married to married to MARK NORTON; EDMUND third son died 1570.
He died 1 of Aprill, 1572 he being of Age then 58.
Fisher’s book can be read in its entirety online.
Nick Louras 